bc8G2-7

14
DOING BUSINESS 2015
This process is leading to a convergence
toward best practices. Here is an
example: In 2005 the time to transfer
property averaged 235 days among the
economies ranking in the worst quartile
on this indicator. Among the best 3
quartiles it averaged 42 days. Today
that gap is substantially narrower.
While the difference is still substantial
at 62 days, it is considerably smaller
than the 193 days in 2005 (figure 1.11).
Similar trends can be seen in other indicators
measuring the complexity and
cost of regulatory processes.
WHAT IS IN THIS YEAR’S
REPORT?
This year’s report presents several case
studies focusing on legal and regulatory
features covered by new or expanded
indicators being introduced this year or
next year. One case study, on protecting
minority investors, discusses the
importance of corporate governance
rules that are now being measured.
Another discusses the importance of a
strong legal framework for insolvency,
also among the features being measured
by new indicators—while a third
examines the new components of the
getting credit indicators. A fourth case
study analyzes good practices in land
administration systems that will be
measured in Doing Business 2016.
These case studies provide new insights
from the newly collected data. The case
study on resolving insolvency shows,
for example, that OECD high-income
economies have the highest average
score on the strength of insolvency
framework index. And economies that
have reformed their insolvency laws
in the past several years score substantially
higher on this index than
economies with outdated insolvency
provisions. This is important, because
economies with better insolvency laws
as measured by Doing Business tend
to have more credit available to the
private sector.
Other case studies in this year’s report
focus on good practices in the areas
of business regulation covered. A case
study on starting a business analyzes
good practices in operating a company
registry and the benefits of those practices.
This case study discusses how
company registries empower businesses
to operate in the formal economy, allowing
them to reap the benefits that
come with formalization, and how online
platforms for company incorporation
make the process faster and cheaper. A
case study on zoning regulations looks
at good practices that can increase efficiency
in construction permitting.
Another case study analyzes the time
series of data on paying taxes with an
emphasis on patterns before, during
and after the global financial crisis. This
case study shows that over the 9-year
period ending in 2012, the global average
total tax rate as measured by Doing
Business fell by 9.1 percentage points,
with the fastest rate of decline occurring
in the years immediately following
the crisis. The reduction was accompanied
by a tangible improvement in the
quality of tax administration in many
economies thanks to their adoption
of the latest technologies to facilitate
online filing and payment.
The report also presents a case study
on enforcing contracts that analyzes
new data on freedom of contract. These
new data will not be included in the
enforcing contracts indicators; they
were collected solely for research, with
the aim of better understanding the
link between contract enforcement and
freedom of contract.
Finally, this year’s report presents a
summary of some of the research presented
at the Doing Business research
conference that took place in February
2014. This research used Doing Business
data or studied areas relevant to
the Doing Business indicators. Doing
Business will continue to monitor progress
in business regulation in economies
around the world with the aim of keeping
governments informed about good
practices and enabling researchers to
further our knowledge of how laws and
regulations affect development.
NOTES
1. For information on the Independent Panel
on Doing Business, see its website at http://
www.dbrpanel.org/.
2. The distance to frontier score shows how far
on average an economy is at a point in time
from the best performance achieved by any
economy on each Doing Business indicator
since 2005 or the third year in which
data for the indicator were collected. The
measure is normalized to range between 0
and 100, with 100 representing the frontier.
3. The correlation between the distance
to frontier score and the IDA Resource
Allocation Index is 0.73. The relationship is
significant at the 1% level after controlling
for income per capita.
4. Regulatory changes making it more difficult
to do business are subtracted from the
number of those making it easier.
5. Branstetter and others 2013; Bruhn 2011;
Kaplan, Piedra and Seira 2011; Monteiro and
Assunção 2012.
6. Chang, Kaltani and Loayza 2009.
7. Dreher and Gassebner 2013.
8. Love, Martínez Pería and Singh 2013.
9. Dutz 2014.
10. Divanbeigi and Ramalho 2014.
11. These results take into account differences
in performance due to country-level timeinvariant
characteristics and firms’ sector,
age and export status. The regression
method used counts every firm equally
even if the number of firms varies across
countries.
12. Aterido, Hallward-Driemeier and Pages
2009.
13. Klapper and others 2010.
14. Ayyagari, Demirguc-Kunt and Maksimovic
2014.